Automotive Distribution at the Gates of Change: Towards New Architectures

The automotive industry has been long adopting a selective distribution scheme in sales and service featuring an architecture of vertical quasi-integration. Growing competition and the need for efficiency have triggered a process of downstream consolidation, while digitalization has been impacting retail by enabling new forms of coordination. In this context some automakers are driven to reshape the distribution architecture gaining more control mainly through an agency approach. However, its application may be more challenging than expected, making room for hybridization and co-existence of many strategies.